A Curse of self-affliction
As soon as the door opened Kaisa could hear Nonni rush over from the living room. The cat, who had been lying quietly on the kitchen chair, tiredly lifted its head, and Archie, lying on the living room carpet, looked up from his whale book.
“Did you forget something?” the cat asked, stretched and arched its back until its small black ears wiggled.
“Hi Orla,” Archie shouted, his head already back between the pages of his book. They all seemed so…utterly unbothered. Kaisa shrugged her shoulder that had almost lost the arm attached to it, just to remind herself that no, she hadn’t just imagined it. Before she could say anything, she felt Orla’s hand on her shoulder gently pulling her back.
“What do you mean, did we forget something? How much time has passed since the girls left?”
Kaisa figured she must’ve been thinking the same thing.
“They basically just walked out the door,” the cat replied.
Kaisa looked over to Rita, hoping she’d look back, but to Kaisa’s surprise Rita didn’t have much of a reaction at all. All she did was blankly stare into empty space. System overload, Kaisa thought. Or maybe…maybe all wasn’t well. Kaisa quickly pushed her thoughts aside. They needed to talk, soon, because she could feel the gap between them growing larger, and that was the one thing that truly scared her.
“Time…how can the Oddity meddle with time,” Orla mumbled, which the cat seemed to have picked up on.
“Why not?”
Orla blinked as if she hadn’t meant to say it out loud, then slightly shook her head.
“I don’t know, I guess I just assumed.”
The cat jumped down from its chair and Nonni hurried to bring them fresh towels from the bathroom.
“Fascinating,” the cat said walking past them. Kaisa had noticed it watching her. Why did it always watch her?
“You know, things also happen TO me, not only because of me. You know that, right?” she said when Nonni dropped a towel on her shoulders just as she’d started to shiver. Trying to avoid the puddle Kaisa left on the floor, the cat strolled around her like it was on patrol, and Kaisa had to fight the urge to wring her hair out above its head.
“So it has been told, but I’m usually inclined to believe otherwise. Mostly due to overwhelming evidence.”
With a pointed finger and a raging fire in her chest Kaisa was just about to shoot back, when Rita broke her silence.
“We saved my mom. I mean, Kaisa saved her. I sat downstairs twiddling my thumbs, if we’re being honest,” she blurted out, and as all attention suddenly turned to her, her cheeks started to turn a soft pink.
“Dad is…,” she wanted to continue, but then fell silent again. “Kaisa, can I change in your room?”
“Y-Yes, of course. Help yourself,” Kaisa replied, feeling a little caught off guard, but also a tiny bit relieved.
The bedroom door closed and Kaisa knew not to follow her now. She probably just needed a break. From them and…everything else. Kaisa sighed, turning her attention back to the cat that sat at her feet, still watching her with its gleaming yellow eyes.
“Things are getting a bit more serious than we might have initially thought,” Kaisa explained.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning a long time has passed inside Orla’s house, and we just almost died.”
Nonni’s face scrunched up as she looked down at her daughter, gently drying her hair with one of the towels. She looked worried. Worried. For Kaisa? Has she ever been? Surely she must have…
“Interesting…,” the cat said, walking right past her and into the living room.
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Almost getting killed is most definitely interesting,” Kaisa replied with a snubbed nose, but secretly hoped the cat hadn’t heard. She didn’t have the patience to be scolded by a talking furball. All she wanted to do was talk to her best friend. Assuming she still had one.
Before they could be interrogated by the cat, both Kaisa and Orla insisted on changing their clothes. When Kaisa entered her room, however, Rita got up from the bed and simply walked past her, mumbling something about ‘giving her some privacy’. For a moment Kaisa wondered whether she should say something, ask her to stay, have a chat, but decided not to.
They all gathered back in the living room, where Orla, Kaisa and Rita started recounting their parts of the story.
“So there are differences in time passing. Rare, very rare. But nothing unseen. I just wonder…,” the cat said, pacing around the living room.
“Are you saying what is happening is supposed to make sense?” Orla asked, pulling at the sleeves of Nonni’s sweater that was just a size too small.
“Of course it is. You might see the Oddity as chaos, but it very much isn’t, Orla.”
“I’m well aware that it isn’t, everybody knows that. It’s just that…this…whatever it is, is new. The Oddity never felt threatening, ever. But I have to be honest, I do very much feel threatened right now,” she said, sighed, and rubbed her temples. “Where are you…where are you…”
And everything went quiet. Kaisa watched Orla as she sunk deeper into the couch, deeper into herself, mumbling, soothing her worries drawing small circles onto the sides of her head. She looked so much older now. Kaisa wanted to say something, wanted to make it better, but there was nothing.
The cat was the first to break the silence as it jumped onto Kaisa’s lap, staring up at her.
“What did you see, girl? Was that creature of any significance?”
The cat waited. Kaisa sighed. She’d prefer nothing more than just to sit back and let someone else figure it out for a change. But that just wasn’t in the cards for her, and she wondered whether it would ever be.
“It wasn’t of our world and not from the Other Place. I think it came from the world of the living. It used to be a human once, a long time ago. It wore a dress, right, Rita? And the pendant it wore. A necklace.”
Kaisa eyed Rita in the hopes of any sort of reaction this time, but she just kept scrunching the seams of her own t-shirt and remained quiet. Weren’t they fine earlier? Why was she being like that all of a sudden?
“It used to be a human woman. I think she was hit by a curse,” Kaisa continued, looking back at the cat, feeling increasingly frustrated. What did she even want? It wasn’t her fault…
“A curse? That sort of stuff exists?”
Orla was leaning so far forward, it looked like she was trying to meet the answer to her question halfway. But Kaisa couldn’t blame her. This kind of stuff was not something you heard about very often, not even in the Spillage. Sometimes you heard the cats say certain things when they arrived from the Other Place, but if you asked them, they never cared to explain. Not because it was any sort of secret, but rather because they were still cats. And when did a cat truly explain itself to anyone?
“You mean someone cursed her? Like a witch? There is magic in the living world?” Orla asked, looking between Kaisa and the cat.
“First of all, witches don’t do this to people,” the cat explained, still staring into Kaisa’s eyes.
“Then what can curse somebody like that?”
“She probably did it herself. That’s how it works, I think. You can’t really be cursed by someone other than yourself,” Kaisa said. She enclosed the cat’s face into both of her hands and gave it a scratch as it started to purr softly.
“It’s true. You are the only force in your life that can truly change you. Everybody else can just nudge you into a certain direction. We like to blame people for our misfortunes, but it’s never anybody else but us. So, again, whatever happened to her, it was her who made it happen,” the cat agreed, and curled up in Kaisa’s lap. She hesitated, but then let her hand sink onto its little body, brushing its fur with her fingers. It was rare, receiving this much affection from the cat, and she didn’t want to ruin it by doing something wrong. Which could be anything.
“How do you curse yourself? I mean, I don’t think I could do that to myself if I wanted to,” Rita said, hiding a shrill chuckle in her voice, staring at her hands. The longer Kaisa watched her, the more annoyed she started to become.
“Of course you can. Everybody can. Nobody ever does it on purpose. It just happens. Mostly out of shame or guilt. Perhaps this woman did something so horrible, that she cursed herself into a monster,” the cat answered, and Kaisa noticed that it had one of its eyes just the slightest bit open. A tiny slit revealing a golden shimmer.
“Like…murder?”
Kaisa leaned back in her seat, her hands still buried in the cat’s soft fur which made the tips of her fingers tingle.
“Perhaps, perhaps not. There are certain forms of shame that are specific to women, but we digress,” the cat replied after a while, its purrs vibrating through Kaisa’s body like raindrops on a metal roof. When Nonni’s hand suddenly brushed up against her shoulder, she jumped a little. Her mother had been standing there, right behind her, this entire time. She would do that from time to time. Just disappear. But when Kaisa saw her face, there was something other than just a silent gaze. She looked…sad.
“Mom?”
Nonni gave Kaisa a little smile, and her shoulder a squeeze, but her eyes remained the same. Heavy. Absent.
“But why was she there, and why was she even waiting for us? She was baiting you, Kaisa. Clearly not knowing what she was getting herself into,” Rita snapped. She stood up and started pacing through the living room in fast, angry steps. Kaisa tried to ignore her. Orla followed her with her eyes and leaned back in her seat, running her finger along her upper lip. It’s what she did when she let Rita run head first into saying or doing something stupid.
“And also, could I maybe remind you that, while we’re sitting here twiddling our thumbs, listening to tales about monsters and curses, my dad could be trapped somewhere. Could have been for a long time, maybe?! What are we doing?! What if he’s hurt?”
Kaisa rolled her eyes at her, making sure Rita saw it.
“What do you want us to do, just jump up and kick Onna’s door down? If you’re in a hurry to die, then be my guest.”
Rita whirled around, and for the first time in a while stared back into Kaisa’s eyes.
“You know what? I don’t even know who the fuck you are. Or what you are…”
As soon as the words had left her mouth it was clear that Rita wasn’t particularly proud of hearing herself say them, but it was too late. Kaisa jumped up from her seat, the cat tumbling from her lap, catching itself at the last moment. Before she could even think of a thing to yell back, Orla’s hand tightly clasped around her arm.
“Ok, ENOUGH! I have no idea what’s going on between you two girls, but you need to talk it out NOW. Because NO, we can’t afford to just burst into Onna’s house like idiots, and NO, we also can’t afford to have petty fights. Now get your sh-”
One.
Two.
Three.
Three knocks.
“Now who on earth could that be,” the cat called over its shoulder as it already made its way towards the anteroom.
“If you let me go, I could actually check. You know, when someone knocks, you don’t usually have to just guess. Archie, come with me, please. Don’t give me that look, you can take Steve, and you don’t have to do anything but stand close to me.” Kaisa shook her arm free and walked over to the front door, Archie followed her, his chin tucked low to his chest, dragging Steve by his arm.
“Alright, that should be close enough. Thanks, little man. See? Nothing to worry about,” Kaisa said to him when she saw him nervously fumbling with his stuffed animal.
While the others still stood in the living room, staring at the entrance, Kaisa opened the door with one swift and self-assured swing, and for a second she hoped she’d see Thorinn.
What followed was a short moment of silence.
“You…?”
Kaisa blindly reached out, trying to find anything within grabbing distance. Her hand found a little pot plant that was placed on a shelf next to the door. As her fingers touched it, right before she ripped it off the shelf to throw it at the clearly unwanted visitor, she asked herself if she had ever noticed that plant ever being there. But if life gives you missiles, you don’t ask questions. You fire.
“Jesus Christ, Kaisa!” Orla ran from the living room, passing Archie, who was slowly backing away. She grabbed Kaisa’s arm before she could let go of the plant.
“Who are you trying to…oh.”
Orla kept Kaisa in a firm grip, but to Kaisa’s relief she too eyed the stranger with distaste.
“What are you doing here?”
